I like my coffee, and have a particular passion for Sumatra. Illy blew me away. It’s incredibly rich, smooth and full-bodied. Everything I love in a coffee. It’s expensive, but it’s just about all I ever buy now.

I’m sold on Fuji’s quality as well as the fact that they use standard AA batteries, which is a huge step above those one-size-fits-one proprietary batteries many digitals use. If I run out of power mid-shoot, all I do is load up with a fresh 4-pack. Mostly I use rechargeables because they seem to last forever, but there’s always someplace to pick up a spare set of AAs which makes this a fantastically convenient line.

The S602Z was the camera of the year a few years ago, and Fuji quality has remained consistent. One caveat: A lot of the current crop use the SD format memory cards. They’re not common, so their prices are kind of high. Look for a model which uses a compact flash or microdrive for reasonably priced storage.

I finally switched exercise albums. I’d been using Abbey Road for weeks, and while it’s still one of the best things ever to exercise to, particularly side 2, I needed a change. On a whim, I chose a disk of dancepieces by Phillip Glass because it led off with “In the Upper Room” a piece which is incredibly close to my heart. Back in the late 80s, two friends and I went on a ballet binge. We went to see ABT in… I think it was ‘88, and the program was nice enough. The first half was “Les Sylphides” and of course it was well danced, but my tolerance for any program which features girls in white tutus waving their arms around a lot is fairly low. I am not a huge fan of classical ballet. Then there was… oh, an early 20th C. piece which had originally been staged by the Ballets Russe, IIRC, and it’s indicative of something or other that I can no longer remember what it was. In any event, that’s why I was willing to sit through Sylphides.

And finally there was “In the Upper Room.” It was fairly new, having been premiered in ‘86. Music by Glass, choreography by Tharp. Absolutely. Freakin’. Amazing. I kid you not when I tell you all three of us ended the program at the edge of our seats, it was that riveting. And at the end, the audience almost as one leapt to its collective feet and screamed its appreciation.

So cut to Valentine’s day, 1990, and it’s snowing out like a sonofabitch, and the three of us are trudging towards the Opera House because, guess what? ABT is back and doing ItUR again. We almost crawled in, shook off a crust of snow and collapsed in the red plush seats to wait. And even by the time the lights dimmed, the theater was only about 1/3rd filled. People trailed in slowly, covered in snow, and apologizing like mad, but no one cared because we all got it. We all wanted to be there in one big, serious way. Not all for the same reasons, but we were the tru fans that night. And they didn’t disappoint. I don’t recall the rest of the program, but again they closed with ItUR, and again it brought the tired, damp audience to its feet. It’s that powerful.

You wouldn’t think it because it starts out softly and in a very unfocused manner. Just bodies moving in space and light. Slowly they begin to interact, and by the end, the last piece, the music and movement suddenly focus and build and grow as if you’re all travelling together to some glorious destination. You know it. In your heart you know that this is one of those promises that’s going to be kept, it’s going to lift you up until you are one of those bodies moving in the light. Sometimes when I watch the very bad copy I have of an on-air performance, I find myself in tears at the end.

This music was a revelation to me, just as the ballet was. I wish a performance was available on video, but I haven’t found one. You’ll have to make do with the music, which isn’t entirely a bad thing.

A lot of folks think they know what this film is about. They think it’s another one of those comedies populated by idiots behaving badly, and oh Ha Ha Ha, there’s this huge fat girl who we can all laugh at.

It’s not. Yes, some people do behave badly, but on the whole, as you get to know Hal, you see that apart from this weird fixation he has on the perfect woman, he’s really kind of a nice guy. He isn’t cruel to women, he’s just wrong about them. And when someone comes along and allows him to get beyond that conditioning, he not only sees the beauty in people, but he sees the ugliness in some beautiful people. He sees people for who and what they are for a change, and he’s never been happier.

His responses to the chain of events are good, they’re honest. He recognizes that losing this ability has hurt him, turned him back into something less than the person he wants to be. And in the end he makes all the right choices with his eyes wide open. He has become the person he wants to be, and that’s cause for celebration.

This isn’t a “deep” film, it’s a comedy. And yeah there are some moments which, as a fat woman, made me cringe. But the message was right: Look deeply into both others and yourself, and make your peace with what you find. You’ll be the better for it.

It begins at a school. A private one from the sound of it, and yet odd somehow, as if these students were part of some strange educational experiment. These children have no possessions to speak of, or rather, they have possessions which appear to be recycled items, or ones made by other students. The story is told from the point of view of a former student, and as it unfolds, you recognize with her how odd it all was, that it gave other people’s used junk, and children’s art a huge importance in the lives of these students. You also begin to wonder how this could be. Where are their parents? Why, when they must spend holidays at home, are they forced to leave the inevitable gifts behind? Why must they even buy their clothes at school sales with fake money given them by the people who run the school, the “guardians?”

But there are no parents, no homes, no holidays. These children live in their school. They’ve been there since they were very small, and when they reach adulthood, they leave. When they leave, there’s a future waiting for them. An early future is to become a Carer, or caregiver. But not to the sick, the elderly or infirm, but to Donors. And while we don’t know what these donors are exactly, we do know that this is the other waiting future for these students.

It’s not hard to figure out what Donors do. They donate parts of themselves to people who need transplants. Though it’s never actually spelled out, things which are donated are probably kidneys, lungs, parts of the liver, eyes, skin, bone marrow… whatever’s needed. These are children who have been cloned as body part farms. And horrible as that concept is, what seems even worse is that their life at their school has actually given them a taste of something outside the narrow framework of what they have been designed to do. They’re not just unconscious bodies in vats, they’re living, breathing people who get angry and feel sorrow, who fall in love and who create. They’re people, and yet they go to their fates with the conviction that this is what they must do. They listen eagerly to rumors and stories of how there are “deferrments” given, but none of them ever seems to consider that there is any choice but to comply with the order to show up at the hospital and give up parts of their own bodies to total strangers. Carers are the caregivers to Donors after a donation, and Donors do not die, they “complete.” They aren’t even given the dignity of death. Indeed, there are other, less hopeful rumors that after a certain number of donations, including ones which will inevitably kill a living person, what’s left is kept operational until all the parts are used up by what would be equivalent to knackers but for human leftovers.

It’s a brutal book written so beautifully that you simply can’t grasp the horror of their lives, their compliance, and the kind of people who would ask such a thing. As one character - a former guardian - says to two of the students who have sought her out to try to discover the truth of the deferrments: People would hate the idea on the face of it, but at the same time their primary concern is that their children survive, their parents, their husbands and wives. Who wouldn’t choose a loved one over what you’ve been taught to think of as a spare part farm, a thing devoid of a soul, of feelings, even of real consciousness? But this isn’t about the lies, it’s about the people who get chewed up by them, and their short, restricted lives which nevertheless manage to offer scope for beauty and affection and creation. This is the real heart the tragedy.

This is one I wouldn’t recommend to the faint of heart. It’s by Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote “The Remains of the Day” another perfectly brutal book. He seems a master of the deep, quiet sadness. I’m not sure how much more of his work I can bear.

Betsy is annoying as all get out, but she knows how to set the vampire world on its ear. Not only does she not play the game, but it turns out she’s their queen. Not that she wants to be, mind you, but when the stakes (no pun intended, but hey) rise and the lives of her friends depend on her taking action - to say nothing of a substantial bribe of designer shoes - she rises to the occasion, kicks some vampire butt, and turns into a queen to be proud of.

Lots of fun so long as you’re not looking for anything more than mind candy.

1 cup buttermilk
2-1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 sticks butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2/3 cup Hershey’s chocolate syrup
7 Hershey (milk chocolate) bars (about 11 ounces), melted and cooled

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Grease either 2- 9×5 loaf pans, 2- 12×8 pans or 1 tube pan.
Measure buttermilk and set aside.
In medium bowl, combine flour, salt and baking soda with wire whisk. Set aside.
Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla with an electric hand mixer. Add syrup and melted chocolate and mix completely. Blend in buttermilk.
Gradually add flour mixture until well combined. Pour into prepared pans.

Bake loaf pans for 55 minutes or until tested done.
Bake rectangular pans for 25 minutes or until tested done.
Bake tube pan for 45 minutes to an hour or until done. Cover it with foil immediately. This has a steaming effect and keeps the cake moister. Keep covered until cake is completely cool.

Extraordinary book which is giving me new insights into the transgressive nature of change, and man’s need for patterns.